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Oh god no, don't drag me back into gaming!  Has anyone done a Sega Master System review here? I skimmed through the first 10 pages but didn't see one. A recent glut of Amazon gift cards led me to dust off the old bird and get a few more games for it (and some other systems) and I figured I could do a writeup, though my collection is a bit small.
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Mar 15, 2013 14:44
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:I'd love to read this; especially if you can explain how it's humanly possible to beat Wonder Boy in Monster Land Cool. I'm at work right now but I'll get cracking on this tonight. No advice on Wonder Boy though. It was on my wish list but I ran out of gift cards. 
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Mar 15, 2013 20:01
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Nuitari posted:Couldn't resist when out and about today.... I'm jealous. I'm currently debating whether to buy a Dreamcast or see if I can get one of the broken ones I have repaired. I bought one when they originally came out but it suddenly had this problem where after about 1-2 minutes of gameplay it'd kick me back to the system menu. My buddy was nice enough to gave me his system since he didn't play it any more. His wouldn't even load anything. Looking back, we both bought ours from the same shop at the same time, so I guess they were part of a bad batch.  And uh, I kinda broke mine even further while trying to repair it.  Still working on that Master System write up. It's turned a lot more effort post-y than I'd expected.
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Mar 17, 2013 20:20
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Its… the Sega Master System! The Master System was made to compete with Nintendo’s NES and was initially released in 1985 in Japan, with releases in 1986 in North America, 1987 in Europe and 1989 in Brazil. It sold reasonably well in the latter two but didn’t make much of an impact elsewhere, selling only about a million units in Japan and only 2 million in the U.S. I’ll be focusing on the American version of the system. It had a brief life in the states, being quickly edged out by Nintendo partly due to poor marketing by Tonka, who had been contracted by Sega to promote it here, and partly because Nintendo has most of the market share and was strict about letting third-party developers create games for other systems. Only a few years into the Master System's lifespan Sega released the Genesis, which effectively canned any support the ailing 8-bit system had. Fun fact: Sonic the Hedgehog had a Master System release in 1991. It was the last licensed game to come out for the system, which was officially discontinued in 1992. I didn’t own one when they initially came out, so my experience is a bit limited. Mine was found at a garage sale about 10 years ago, and until recently spent most of its time boxed up in a closet. My wife and I bought a house about a year ago and now that there’s plenty of space for all of my old games, whelp, looks like the gaming bug has bit me again. Used sets usually go for anywhere from $50 to $100 dollars, depending on what comes with it (if anything). There are a few peripherals such as the arcade stick, the sports pad, the light phaser and the 3d glasses. In order, the arcade stick is sort of like a left-handed NES Advantage without the turbo buttons, the sports pad is the same deal but with a trackball instead of a joystick, the light phaser is pretty much the same deal as the NES zapper. The 3d glasses are apparently pretty similar to the ones that go with 3D tvs these days. I’ve only just gotten started collecting for this system, so I don’t have anything but the basics yet. Which is kind of unfortunate since I just bought a 3D game (Maze Hunter 3d) thinking that I only need some cheap red/blue glasses to use it. The Deck: The original looks kinda like this...     The Master System went through a late-era revision, going from the clunky trapezoid above to a sleeker design a little more reminiscent of the Genesis. I'd thought that there were two versions of the trapezoid and was going to say that mine was the one that came with Hang-on and Safari Hunt installed instead of Snail Maze, but lo and behold, Snail Maze was apparently on here all along! Unlike the other two games, which are selectable from a screen after the Sega logo appears, Snail Maze is accessible by holding the up button and both the 1 and 2 buttons after turning the system on. If you do it right the game will scroll in from the right side once the Sega jingle is done. On further review it turns out that there were multiple versions of the Model 1.
Supposedly there was also a version that came with the top-down space shooter Astro Warrior, but I couldn't find any info in this. I can't find any specific info on release dates for the various system models but the 3D glasses that came with the 3005-C were only released in 1987, as was Missile Command 3D, so we can safely assume that this version was not available during the set's initial release date in 1986. I can’t say for certain that Sega took their U.S. design cues from the NES, but I’ve read that Nintendo determined that an American audience would want something that looked like a serious piece of high-end electronic equipment. The Master System certainly has that look what with the mostly black color scheme and sort of monolithic appearance. If you find a set without the power adapter or TV cords just pilfer some from a Genesis. I got this system from a garage sale and, IIRC, it did not have either. In any event it takes the ones from my series 1 Genesis just fine. Controller: it looks pretty much like the NES controller’s evil twin and has the same basic setup with a d-pad on the left and two action buttons on the right. But do you notice what’s missing? Yep, there are no start or select buttons on this thing. The pause button is on the system itself, which is a hassle when playing more action-oriented carts. The d-pad is sort of square-shaped, having sections not only for up, down, left, and right, but also for diagonal movement. It’s also sensitive. While playing side scrollers like Rastan, Altered Beast, and Lord of the Sword, you may encounter sudden bouts of ducking when moving left or right if your finger isn’t bullseyed on one of the pad's nubs. The pad will register you as holding a diagonal if you stray so much as half a millimeter. It makes things tricky because you can’t just slide your thumb from one direction to the next. You’ll need an extra split second to pick your thumb up off of the pad and move it to the down button and press down. Doesn’t sound like much but it can make timing a pain. The standard controller won’t be relevant to any games I’m reviewing however. The thing is, the system works just fine with any Genesis controller, be it the classic 3-button design or the revised 6-button. I try not to use the original controller it came with because the cord is in rough shape. Games: The cartridges are about the same size and shape as Genesis carts, though without any artwork on the cartridge. The box artwork is frequently much more bland as well.   As mentioned above, the system comes with three games built in. Hang-on: Pretty basic motorcycle racing game. There’s no music past the title screen and not much in the way of scenery. If you so much as graze a bush your fragile motorcycle will go up in a ball of flame. I'm not a big fan of this one but that’s mainly because I’m terrible at racing games. Safari Hunt: Still don't have a light gun. I have yet to play it. Snail Maze: Guide a tiny little orange snail through a tiny little maze. Some of the walls can be tough to see. I can’t see anyone killing more than a few minutes with this. But wait, there’s more!  My own collection stands at only 10 games right now, with two more on the way as of tonight. From what I’ve seen cartridges aren’t terribly uncommon in used game shops. The good news is that while the system’s paltry sales mean that fewer games are available, there aren’t as many nostalgia-crazed nerds fighting over them. Prices online and in brick-and-mortar stores are pretty much comparable to NES games, in my limited experience, though few places have more than a handful at any given time. There are a few hard-to-find carts such as Golden Axe: Warrior (a Zelda clone) and Moonwalker. Yep, the Moonwalker with Micheal Jackson. I just picked up a copy of Afterburner today and haven’t played it beyond plugging it in to see if it works. As for the rest, in alphabetical order we have… Altered Beast: I can think of no more appropriate way to begin this than by saying “Rise from your grave!”  Graphically this is pretty good for its time. I first played the Genesis versions years ago, and the sprites are nearly as large though the detail and animation isn’t nearly as fluid. Things feel a little slow when there are too many monsters on the screen. One thing I like about this version over the Genesis one is that the actual enemy sprites themselves explode into pieces, rather than metamorphosing into miscellaneous bags of gore. Your ancient undead hero only has three modes (regular guy, super buff guy, and werethingamajig) as opposed to the Genesis version adds in an intermediate state between regular and super buff that as near as I can tell, only tears your shirt. Take that, shirt. Sound is kinda meh. There are some relatively nice digitized voices such as your character screaming and the main baddie laughing at the end of the stage, but the music is bland and disappears completely during boss fights, making them a bit dull. Expect a lot of cheap hits. If you get knocked into a crowd, you’re dead as you’ll be bounced between enemies over and over again until your life is completely drained. You can jump by pressing buttons 1 and 2 together, but the jump attacks are really hard to aim correctly and are pretty much useless as most airborn enemies will approach from directly above, making them easier to dispatch with the ducking kick. A good kick to the shins is probably your best bet with most enemies. Master System video Genesis Video Double Dragon:  A classic. Well it's a classic I never really liked, but how can any gamer not own a copy of Double Dragon? This game is the gall bladder if retro gaming: it stinks and you could probably get by without it, but why should you?  The picture directly above was lifted from a Youtube comparison of the game between systems. I think the graphics on this version are more detailed than the one that came out for the Nintendo, but I suppose that's arguable and neither is all that pretty to begin with. Sounds are the pretty typical beeps and boops of the mid 80s. While I’d hesitate to say it’s not a challenging game, a lot of the trickier parts can be gotten through with cheesy tactics and a bit of common sense. Don't get yourself sandwiched between two enemies, and try not to stand in line with someone who has a drum or rock hoisted overhead. You get infinite continues until the last stage, IIRC. Buttons 1 and 2 are punch and kick, and there’s an impressive number of other moves for a game of this era. 1 and 2 together launches you into a reverse jump kick that will nail anyone behind you, or into a forward jump kick if you’re holding left or right on the d-pad. Trouble is, aside from the basic moves and the jump kicks none of these attacks work all that well. Back and punch gives you an elbow that’s meant to hit attackers behind you, but the range is pathetic so it almost never lands. You can headbutt by pressing forward twice in quick succession but in the time it takes you to execute that you could’ve already punched twice, and it leaves you open. In any event, standing toe to toe with an enemy and just mashing buttons is going to get you killed fast. There are various weapons like whips and drums and rocks. The hit detection the whip is, well, hit and miss. Abobo scared the gently caress out of me as a kid. Never could get the hang of Double Dragon back then and he always wrecked my poo poo. Youtube video Side by side comparison of the NES and SMS versions Golvellius: Valley of Doom: So the valley where the kingdom of Aleid gets there water from is starting to fill with demons. As if this isn’t bad enough the king of Aleid has fallen ill and His daughter, Rena, who went down into the valley to find an herb called Mea to heal him, hasn't returned. You’re a strapping young lad by the name of Kelesis, ad only you can  I bought this one because of the giant snake. Golvellius is a pretty game with some spiffy-looking backgrounds and really polished character sprites. The zones you travel through are all varied and each has a nice change of scenery from the last. Music is kinda nice and changes every so often depending on how far you’ve progressed (read: how many power ups you’ve acquired). I particularly liked Crawky’s* and Golvellius’s themes. Sounds effects are pretty sparse. You’ll spend most of the game listening to the noise of your sword hitting a baddie or a baddie hitting you. *(Note: link above has the wrong boss listed.) This is a little gem that’s not quite on the level of Zelda but is a fun play nonetheless. It has the same basic gameplay as Zelda; move from screen to screen, kill monsters, enter caves and talk to fairies or little old ladies within. One difference: every single screen in Golvellius:VoD has a cave. Some are obvious right away but many are hidden. Most pop into view after you kill a few enemies on that screen but others might need to be dug out from under a rock (swing your sword) or might require a “switch” (usually a rock or tree) to be struck. And some don’t appear until after you’ve defeated the boss of that area. It’s not terribly challenging if you pick up all of the items you’d expect to find (shields, pendants, etc), and upgrade your sword at the earliest opportunity. Regular enemies have set patterns of attack: bees spin in circles and shoot bullets at you; knights and cannibals wander around and throw swords and exes, respectively; bats and ravens fly directly at you. In fact, the bats are probably the biggest danger in the game, they fly on a curve that often takes them out of direct line of attack, and a swarm can do a lot of damage quickly. The only terrestrial monster that might give you nightmares is skeletons. They’re the only thing in the game that can match your speed and they do a lot of damage. If one catches up to you you’ll need to move to a new screen to shake it. More than likely multiple ones will run at you and stick directly on you in a spot where you can’t hit them. Oh god, skeletons! Bosses have very predictable patterns—move here, throw projectile, move there, throw projectile, repeat ad nauseam—and it probably won’t take you more than one or two tries to take any of them down. It does have a few flaws. For instance, on my initial playthrough I was impressed by the game’s variety in having side scrolling and top down dungeon levels, but as the game wore on it was clear that not a lot of thought went into any of them. If you’re in a side scroller, you’ll fight snakes, snails, spiders and fleas and giant snakes no matter whose dungeon it is. If you break open a box, it either has nothing in it or three snakes. Usually the snakes. If the dungeon is top down, you’ll fight bats, moths and even bigger bats and then giant bats. It’s possible to take a wrong path in these levels. For the side scrollers, you won’t be able to go any further and will have to back out and start all over. For the top down dungeons, a blocked path means that the screen will catch up to you and boot you out and, you guessed it, you’ll have to start all over. Not that I’ve played many Master System games but this is my favorite so far. The ending is cute. Sort of like a child’s story about a crayon drawing they made. Beat the bad guy! Save the princess!  Golvellius video Protip: In Rolick's desert a fairy will tell you that you need to push a blue rock to enter Rolick's cave. This is bullshit. You need to strike the rock 5 times with your sword.  Great Football:  I don’t know what to say about this one. The cart doesn’t work half the time and I may as well be mashing my thumbs into a dead squirrel for how responsive the controls are. The play selection screen presents 8 or more formations to select, slowly moving a flashing border over each one, and you’re supposed to press button 2 when it’s over the one you want. Even if you wanted play #1 you have to wait until the border has flashed over each one in order. It’s a chore. This was before the era where game companies were willing to pay licensing fees to the NFL, so the teams are all made up as well. There’s a series of “Great” sports games for the Master System. If this one is any indication the name is overly optimistic. Great Football. Mostly the title screen. Lord of the Sword: A not bad side scrolling RPG ala Legend of Zelda 2. You’re Landau, a guy with a pretty mean sword and a bow that barely works. Long story short, a demon murdered the hell out of the king. Apparently there’s no heir (this isn’t discussed), so the council of elders decides that the next king must face three tasks. 1: Find the tree of Marill 2: Subdue the Goblins of Balala valley 3: Destroy the statue of evil  It’s a decent game that gets bogged down by two things. First, there are too many enemies. Each scene is cluttered with flaming bats, floating plants, hovering demons and all sorts of mobile turds that you can’t just expect to walk onto your sword. You’ll need a different strategy to get past each one. Fire bat? Easy, just attack it. Phoenix? Oh, well, better turn around, draw the bow and shoot it when it dives. Demon? Need to jump and slash at it. Or just walk past. Maybe. Since some come down to attack and some just hover in place Flying fish? Best not go too fast or you’ll walk right into it before you can draw your sword. So much of the fighting in this game has you stopping before you can attack. It’s tedious and doesn’t accomplish much since you don’t gain experience or money and none of the beasties drops power ups. Landau draws his bow so slowly that an enemy that’s across the screen will already be in his face by the time he fires. I guess that’s why nobody called him “Lord of the Bow” Secondly, while there are plenty of towns in which to restore your energy, you’ll need to enter into the same building over and over again to reach full health. And each town has exactly one open house to interact with. So the payoff for fighting your way through a flood of miscellaneous nasty critters is typically a very brief chat with one depressed villager before moving on. Graphically mediocre. Musically meh. Both the bow and the sword make sort of a tearing noise when you use them. Nothing much to see here. Lord of the Sword vid Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord: Seems like the most Dragon Warrior-ish RPG on the system aside from Phantasy Star. I’ve barely even started playing it. Wander around, kill monsters and gain experience and gold. Occasionally some of the critters you fight will be loads stronger than you and will crush you in a second. The randomness makes it tough to get started and has kinda soured me on it. The monsters are nice graphically but the rest of the game is a bit drab and the interface takes a lot of getting used to.  Video. Mostly fights. Some filler Rastan: Awww gently caress yeah! A good port of an awesome arcade game.  Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the king’s daughter from the land of Semia, where even villains fear to tread? And for that matter, if even villains avoid the place then who are all of these assholes trying to kill you? Move right, cut down lizardmen with your sword, avoid traps and pitfalls and Semia’s poisonous water. The only things not trying to kill you in this game are either dead or rocks, and the rocks are just resting to kill you later. Control is decent. Rastan moves and attacks without any hitches, and hit detection is good while you’re on the ground. Attacks in the air are a bit of a crapshoot though, which can be a problem as numerous areas of the game have spots where an imprecise jump smacks you into an enemy. The control is good enough that you’ll always have a pretty good idea of where you’re going to land, but when setting yourself up to hit a swinging rope or a moving platform time is a luxury you’ll never have. The continuous barrage of enemies discourages you from taking your time. Traps in the castle levels are set up to take advantage of that tendency to hurry, and it’s easy to miss the two or three pixels of a wall spike until it reaches out and skewers you. I’ve never made it past round 4. Of the first three bosses, all follow extremely basic patterns and are trivially easy to defeat. It seems that developers realized this because your health bar will slowly drain during every boss fight. Though even this doesn't add much challenge. The first boss just runs back and forth on the screen for chrissake. Visually it’s nice. The backgrounds are decent and you can distinguish various enemies from one another even if the details are a little fuzzy and there is some flicker when too many are on screen. Monsters burst in a brief but satisfying fountain of blood when you hit them. Appropriately barbaric. The music doesn’t change from level to level. You get the wilderness tune, the castle tune, and then the boss tune. All serviceable but not memorable. The appeal in this is from lumbering ahead and mowing down enemy after enemy with your barbarian sword and sweaty man muscles, and the gameplay really lends itself well to that. Monsters deal enough damage to tick you off you but they go down fast, meaning sweet, sweet vengeance comes only moments after that sumbitch lizard man nicked your arm. Rastan smash! Space Harrier: In the year 6226, Dragon Land is under attack by Uriah the one-eyed space mammoth. Seriously. And who do embattled native peoples call in times of need? If you said “a young white guy” you got it in one.  This is a shoot-em-up with a “behind the character” perspective. It’s not bad, but the major draw of Space Harrier, it’s graphics, obviously don’t hold up well in comparison to modern games. That can’t be helped of course, but there isn’t much to this one other than strafing around the screen and blasting the floating brains, spaceships, and trees and shrubs unlucky enough to get in your way. The game shows off an impressive number of sprites on the screen at any one time, but it looks extremely busy and can be tough to tell where things are in perspective. The music is upbeat and bouncy. Sound effects are the “bloop bloop bloop” of your gun and the omnipresent “macau macau” noise of explosions. A bit of Space Harrier on youtube Spellcaster:“Kane, use this spell and head the words! Rememver it carefully!” actual in-game quote.  Haven’t played this one enough to comment. Graphically it’s pretty nice. In order to select your spells in an action scene you need to go into the menu screen which is accessed by pressing the pause button across the room. The spells themselves seem to require certain button presses to activate. There are some very brief, Shadowgate-esque exploration scenes between stages. Reminds me vaguely of Flying Dragon: The Secret Scrolls for the NES. This apparently had a sequel on the Genesis called Mystic Defender.  Spellcaster vid And a couple of misc pics I'm including because I took them, so why not?  Our old time-y gaming setup in the basement.  That's every system in the house aside from the PS2 and Gamecube. Funnily enough I'm not actually a Sega nut. I just left my NES and SNES behind when I moved out of my parents' house years ago. Gives me something to do when I visit. Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 17, 2013 23:07
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Tusen Takk posted:I just remembered when I was little, my dad had a few arcade machines and this was one of them: This is one the games I just ordered from Amazon.  I played it on an emulator years ago and haven't seen it in a long time. It looks and sounds really different than I remember but I'm sure I got the right game since the whole shoot-em-up in different eras thing exactly fits the game I was thinking. Fake edit: Did a little digging and realized that the game I was looking for was actually called Gain Ground and wasn't available for the Master System in America. Oh well, Time Soldiers still looks cool and Gain Ground got a Genesis release, so it's all good.
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Mar 18, 2013 01:16
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Sarchasm posted:Count me in with the people who enjoyed the Master System writeup. Especially interesting for me since I've never played one, and I'm pretty sure that's my first time ever seeing one of the cartridges. Glad everyone liked it. It's a pretty cool system and I think it could've given the NES a real run for its money if it'd gotten introduced a little earlier and had had more support. Pretty impressive when you think that Sega cranked out a little over 100 games for this thing almost entirely by themselves. 
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Mar 18, 2013 03:49
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:Wanted to say thanks again; and just out of curiosity: is there an easy way to determine which model 1 will have which game? I wish I knew. I went into this thinking that the two model 1 sets were Snail maze and then Hang On/Safari Hunt. I was going to do some extra digging since there are a couple of details that got missed in the writeup, so I'll let you know if anything turns up.
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Mar 18, 2013 14:57
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zenintrude posted:I was thinking about it, and if anyone would like to go ahead and put together a report on VGA box image quality, I would be more than willing to send my box for analysis/comparison. I doubt anyone want to spend The existence of this emote  makes me wonder if I should stick to cheaper hobbies like drinking.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:39
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write-ups with pictures are always fun in here.
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Still doing some additional work on my SMS post. There were more version of the Model 1 than I'd expected. IIRC Myamotos RGB NES asked if there was any way to tell when they were released but I can't find any dates for the following. I will say that the carts for Hang-On/Safari Hunt and for Alex Kidd came out in 1986, before the cart for Missile Defense 3D in 1987, but that might not mean anything since the set that came with Missile Defense 3d packed in was the all bells and whistles version (read: came with the gun and glasses), meaning it's not unlikely that it was out at the same time as other sets that packed with less hardware.  Added this to the writeup. quote:On further review it turns out that there were multiple versions of the Model 1. While I'm here, are any of the modern replacement controllers for the NES, SNES or Genesis worth it? My originals are getting kind of old and creaky and I'm debating between replacing them with old authentic ones or going with something new and hoping it'll last longer.
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Mar 19, 2013 13:38
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zenintrude posted:All aftermarket, especially modern aftermarket, controllers for retro systems are terrible beyond belief. They sell replacement rubber pads!?  I love you. \/\/ zenintrude posted:In rom-hack news, The Legend of Zelda now makes more sense: Well now that's just silly. Girls are supposed to sit there and be patient and get rescued by boys.* *(Post brought to you by the five-year-old me who was alive when Legend of Zelda first came out.) Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 19, 2013 14:14
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Crappy cel phone pic of my last order from Amazon. Cool Spot is that rare licensed game that somehow doesn't suck, whereas WWF Royal Rumble was made by LJN and you can guess what that means. It was a nostalgia buy. My cousin and I used to play it a lot, especially after we discovered that if you didn't go for the 10th punch when you had a guy on the turnbuckles, you could just dismount, go back in and keep hitting the poor sap 9 times. Again and again. And again. And again. I guess I had a thing for torturing Doink the Clown. Also, trying to play Maze Hunter 3d without the glasses 
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Mar 20, 2013 14:55
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I'm plugging away at Rastan and still having a bitch of a time getting anywhere in stage 4. There's a spot early on where if you fall in the water, every single possible jump you can make either dumps you back in the same pool or in another pool. You can't jump high enough to go forward so you have to backtrack through several more pools, taking damage from each along the way. There's an infinite lives code which I'm going to need to make use of. Love this game but I could be a tour guide on the first three levels at this point. And yet I feel whiny after finding a long play video of the arcade version, which looks twelves times as hard. The guy who played it made it through without losing any lives or even taking damage.  Prior to picking up the Master System version, I'd played the arcade one maybe once or twice almost a quarter century ago. Watching this make me realize why this game stuck with me for so many years; the action is just non-stop. There's fire coming out of the walls and fire coming out of the floors and fire underneath you and lizards and skeletons and gladiators and wizards all trying to murder you and spikes and spears and bats and pretty much everything and its cousin out to murder the ever loving hell out of you. I'll write a review if and when I beat it.
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Mar 22, 2013 13:52
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Random Stranger posted:They're okay but pretty flawed. The interface is a problem and the difficulty swings pretty wildly. Not much to add to this. I remember them starting off alright but the difficulty spikes pretty quickly and the gameplay can be a touch monotonous at times.
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Mar 22, 2013 17:07
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Yestermoment posted:I figured this would be the best thread to go to ask. I recently fell into a PSX and my memory of the games for it are really only FF8 and Digimon World (was a sheltered nerd-child). There is a retro-game shop in the local strip mall that has tons of 'em. What are some worthwhile games to get? I'm not looking for anything that's ULTRA-RARE LIMITED RELEASE, but am willing to spend more than the spare change in my pocket for a good one. Obvious classics (or at least, iconic games) would be Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 1-3, Final Fantasy 7, Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot. None of those would cost you too much either, I think. For RPGs, Wild Arms 1 and 2 are both good and kinda overlooked, IMO. Suikoden 1 and 2 are both pretty fun. 2 is awesome but is apparently tough to find and really expensive, but the first one should be findable around $30. Vandal Hearts 1 and 2 are turn-based strategy RPGs a la Final Fantasy Tactics. The first is cool if, pretty standard and a bit short. VH2 has an interesting mechanic where your enemies move at the same time as you. That is, when you pick a character to move, the computer moves one of its own pieces too. You need to get a good at anticipating what enemy is going to to move next, and where they'll stop. It also has tons of secret stuff, replayable levels, a massive amount of character customization and a really cool story with some seriously WTF moments. Sort of an aciton/RPG and an all-around phenomenal game, Castlevania: Symphony of The Night plays a bit like Metroid and is a very long game. Theme Hospital is a decent sim game beyond its humor value, though the interface is kinda clunky. If you're more in the mood for action and/or driving I'd highly recommend Twisted Metal 2. TM1 is decent but feels a bit cheap, and the levels aren't quite as interesting as those in the sequel. #3 had "realistic physics" which turned out to be a code for "we the developers are aliens from another planet with different physics and no clue how to make video games." Tekken 2 and 3 would be good bets if you're into fighting games. They're both fairly easy to pick up but complex enough that they keep you playing for a long time. I was never much of a puzzle guy, but Intelligent Qube and Irritating Stick both fall into that category.  A more obscure one that probably won't get a lot of endorsements is One. Yep, it's just called One. Fun shoot-em-up game where you're a guy with a bionic gun in place of an arm. You get madder the more you shoot and shoot more the madder you get. Not iconic, but fun if you just want to see things explode. Tyson Tomko posted:So on a whim I bought 2 things I've been putting off buying for a long time, the Sega Master System Light Phaser and Koilibri on the 32x. I just bought one today too! I don't know that there's any "must have" games for it but I vaguely recall hearing good things about Gangster Town. I'm surprised they're as cheap as they are. Only paid  for it.
Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Mar 23, 2013 |
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Mar 23, 2013 20:41
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I passed by a 34-inch HD crt TV four times yesterday. I just couldn't take it any more so I brought it home this morning. Thank god it was only a quarter mile from my house because there was no way I could lift it into my car. As it was I carted it back home with a hand truck with a pillow tied on. And now my shoulders feel like jelly which is bad because I'm going to work where I left heavy stuff all day. Sad thing is that the red gun on this is definitely going. Anyone know how hard those are to replace? I know next to nothing about the hardware end of this hobby and a good portion of what goes on here is over my head.
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Mar 25, 2013 15:03
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All right, here's the monstrosity I picked up off the side of the road this morning. It didn't want to go indoors without a fight, and unfortunately I did take a few chips out of the bottom getting it into our storage room in the basement. Oh well, nobody will see that.  Wait, it's HD? Sweet!  Well, let's take a look at some of the features on this thing.    DNR? Progressive whatsit? I know nothing about TVs. Sure are a lot of ports in back though, which would be nice to have since the current gaming tv only has two and I need to run a splitter off of one. I'm liking this so far; wide/flat screen, HD and with loads of places to plug in my old systems. But how does it look?  Well that's a problem. You get a blue title screen for Rastan if you put in the infinite lives code. I did not put in the code. Even after monkeying about with the tint I could only get it to be mildly orange at best, as displayed above.  Yeah it's a lush green forest, but those rocks should be reddish brown. Well crap. I spoke to a few people at work but couldn't get a consensus on what might be wrong with it. My boss suggested changing the lamp, which looks like it could cost $60-$100. I've never replaced one before. Do you need a specific make and model of lamp or can you just pilfer one from a different TV? Is it worth it or should I just chuck this thing back on the side of the road? Would this be a better question for Inspect Your Gadgets?
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Mar 25, 2013 22:24
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Allen Wren posted:That is literally my favorite NES game, and I've never heard anyone pronounce it Crys-TAL-is before. It's always been CRYS-tul-is. I'm pretty weirded out by that. Looking back, I'm not sure if I really liked it more than Zelda or I'm just saying that now. I haven't played either in years but I was giddy over the charging mechanic on the sword, and it's graphically a much prettier game. My TV adventure might be heading for trash day. I didn't notice it until earlier tonight but the set has the smell of a TV that was exposed to cigarette smoke and then something or other to cover up that cigarette smoke. Thank god our town doesn't charge to take away old TVs. Going to put a little more work into this, but my wife is asthmatic and hates the smell of smoke so the outlook is not so good. Regarding the picture, I fiddled with the settings, restored the factory defaults, and then just left it on and waited for a while in the hopes that the color might come back if it warmed up. Nada.
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Mar 26, 2013 06:04
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Vegastar posted:My trinitron rack is essentially half a 30 dollar wire storage rack with zip ties, cardboard and a little creativity. I'd be constantly afraid that that thing would tip over and crush me.  The TV I'm trying to rescue apparently weighs just shy of 180 pounds. Might lose 5 of that after I finish cleaning the insides. Yeeccchh. Edit: In news that's a bit more game related, my descent back into the gaming hobby has accelerated as my aunt finally found that old NES she had kicking around the house and has dropped it off at my parents' house. Going to go pick it up when I see them for Easter. Score!  
Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Mar 27, 2013 |
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Mar 27, 2013 01:01
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jyrque posted:I feel like a lot of people (new people? ) ITT are wary of showing off their latest purchases "because the thread is actually about a/v mods". Like the original retro collection thread, I think there should be more pictures of everyone's collections. How about collections? There's not much in the way of handhelds in this household. This is about everything aside from my wife's original Gameboy, GBC (same color as mine) and DS.  Like I said, there's not much. I only finally bought a Gameboy when the GBC came out. All I can say about it is that anyone who owns a Gameboy of any stripe but does not own Tetris is a blasphemer. Revenge of the Gator is an obscure, bog-standard pinball game I have for the nostalgia factor. I'm probably the only one who even knows it exists.  There's even less for the Game Gear. I got this shortly before I got out of gaming in the early 2000's. Gotta say that the graphics for Mortal Kombat are surprisingly good, but the control  And there's the crown jewel.  Not so impressive today, but I got my Lynx (in the original box  ) well after the system had bit the dust but before you could quickly and easily buy anything off of the internet. Sadly all I have is the system itself, a crappy non-standard adapter that sometimes heats up way too much to use, and Road Blasters and California Games. It's a pretty impressive handheld on the technical end; all color, and with the ability to flip the screen so you can play left-handed. It also chews through batteries like a motherfucker.The screens a little scratched. No fault of my own though, I've barely taken it out of the box since I got it.  To give you an idea of how big this thing is, my meaty hand covers just about a third of it.  Here's the card slot. That'd be California Games inside. Some games (like this) are straight up-and-down cards and are a bitch to get out. Others, like Roadblasters, have a bit of a hanging lip on the end to make removing them much easier. For all I know only one or the other style was made and one of these cards is a freak.  Pretty much your typical game card.
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Mar 28, 2013 14:23
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HKR posted:I can maybe see why people think this but it's hardly the only discussion that happens in this thread. When covering a pretty broad topic different aspects are going to be brought up. I do however think maybe certain posters should stop telling newbies to go RGB/Buy XRGBs off the bat because that poo poo is scary off-putting. A bit. Some day in the far future I might get into the modding or complicated technical ends of this but at the moment it's all Greek. For now I'm just happy to be dusting off all of my old consoles. 
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Mar 28, 2013 14:59
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InvadErGII posted:Collection pics! If not the most beautiful thing I have ever seen this as at least in the top 10. Lowen SoDium posted:Fun facts about the Atari Lynx. This sounds way too "post-2600 era Atari" to be false. Did they manage to do anything right after the video game market crashed? Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Mar 29, 2013 |
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Mar 28, 2013 22:26
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InvadErGII posted:e: Depending on which one you're looking at, it might also be Robodemons, which is basically what would happen if Gradius and Ghosts & Goblins had a baby and the baby had a learning disability. Oh god I think I still have a copy of that somewhere. The music has this sourly apathetic Playmobil music box sort of ring to it. In all fairness to Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree, they did manage to make one good game. Crystal mines is decent. They apparently thought so too since they remade it twice on the same system. 
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Mar 29, 2013 01:48
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Neddy Seagoon posted:God dammit, I keep telling myself there aren't enough games on it that I'm interested in to justify getting a Saturn, but there do seem to be quite a few JRPG's that keep getting mentioned Shining Force 3 is probably the most frustrating because even if you find a copy ( ) it's actually only one installment of a much larger game. They never released the last two in the US. But there are plenty of other good RPGs on the Saturn like Magic Knight Rayearth (), and Panzer Dragoon Saga (). Or if you want other games with RPG elements there's the puzzle/point and click game Lunacy () the strategy game Dragon Force () and a good old-fashioned side scrolling beat-em-up in Guardian Heroes ().You may have to sell yourself to afford RPG'ing on the Saturn. Though Guardian Heroes is totally worth it.  flyboi posted:Shining Force 3 Episode 2 & 3 have translation patches and are pretty much done Somebody take my money and give these to me right now.
Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Mar 29, 2013 |
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Mar 29, 2013 14:16
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sandpiper posted:I know this is really ~opinions~ but I didn't think MKR was actually that good. I mean sure, it's a great anime to game adaptation with serviceable combat, but it has a lot of issues and since I prize actual gameplay pretty highly in action RPGs (I hate Secret of Mana's garbage hit detection and various immense problems like all enemies casting fullscreen magic spells that immobilize you and are completely undodgeable, and you do the same to them). If you're willing to look past its flaws it's a fun enough game. Actually I'd agree. It's decent enough but nowhere near worth what people are asking for it these days. I lucked out because I bought my Saturn within a year or two of the system being declared dead, and I have all the games I listed (aside from PDS) but didn't pay more than $50 for any of them. I think MKR was in the $20-$30 range at the time, and might be worth it at that price point. $150? Sheesh, I'll just play Zelda again thanks.
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Mar 29, 2013 15:10
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Visiting the family for Easter weekend and I just finished digging through and cataloging the contents of the games cabinet in my parent's basement. A few surprises here. For starters, I have no idea when I got a dogbone NES controller. Second, I'd guess my collection was at about 70 games when I moved out a decade ago. It's at 139. Including a copy of Ikari Warriors 2 that I sure as hell don't remember buying. My only guess on how it got in there is that Guerilla War took a poo poo. This one wasn't a surprise but I nearly had a panic attack handling it anyway. Pardon the horrible phone pic. 
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Mar 30, 2013 06:35
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Install Gentoo posted:
I saw games for sale for this in the not too distant past. There's a local salvage/discount retail chain in Massachusetts by the name of Building 19. It's mildly terrifying to browse but you can occasionally find ridiculous deals on stuff. They didn't have the system itself though so there wasn't a whole lot of temptation to buy.
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Mar 31, 2013 03:51
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Midnight Raider posted:I loved the choices of Gameboy colors.. In fact, I even loved the ad campaign for it, I remember in Nintendo Power they had some creative ones. Like hamburger topping flavors being matched up to the different GB colors. You can always color it yourself. I spray painted my NES black when I was a sullen teenager. 
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Mar 31, 2013 15:24
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t Thanks for making it hard to get anything in cool colors anymore, jerks."
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Wow, thanks for bringing up Atari Age. No idea how good or bad those Lynx games are but at $3/ea I don't much care.
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Apr 1, 2013 12:10
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d0s posted:There is a US version that connects to the NES, it's branded as the "Sansui Joycard" I just dug one of these out of my parents' basement. Plugged it in this morning and the sound quality is actually pretty good as long as you keep the volume below the maximum. It's a bit thicker than a regular NES controller but you get used to that pretty quickly.
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Apr 2, 2013 13:46
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Rescued a few things from my parent's house this weekend. This is the setup in the basement. Their house has seen better days.   If you look closely there are two NES's on the right of the TV. The black one is the one I'd left behind when I moved out. The ordinary grey one my aunt dropped off a few days prior, since it'd just been gathering dust in her closet.   Yeesh, this closet is a huge mess. Time to rescue some of this stuff. I spent a few hours on Friday night counting and cataloging the contents of the cabinet, and took home anything with a lot of monetary or sentimental value, or that would likely never see use at my folks' house. Grand total was 139 NES games and 53 SNES games So what did I take home? Well, a bunch of controllers to begin with.  Not much to say about the Advantage or the Super Game Boy. I actually had two of the latter, so I left one there. The Sansui Joycard in the upper left is a bit of an odd duck: a controller with a headphone jack. Other than that it's a pretty typical controller with a couple of turbo switches. The banana shaped thing? I forget it's actual name but it was manufactured by Quickshot, presumably for flight sim games. It's awkward to handle and I've probably only ever used it twice at most. Then there's the Turbo Touch 360. The d-pad is touch sensitive. Not a bad idea but it's a bitch trying to press down on just one direction at a time, and the pad is sensitive enough that if some part of your thumb hovers over an area, that area activates. Bleah. Dad and I went out to breakfast on Saturday and did a little shopping. I got the following bunch of games at Savers, along with a copy of NHL 95 for the Genesis.  Now, I didn't technically need the zapper. It turned out that there were two in the cabinet; the one I'd already been using and the one pictured below.  I don't even remember buying this. It's still in the original plastic and has definitely never been used. Couldn't bear to take it out of the box, so that one at Savers was a godsend. As for games...  The holy quadrology. For some reason DW4 has two manuals. I also have a spare manual for Ghost Lion if anyone wants it. The catch is that you have to admit to owning Ghost Lion.  A heap of RPGs and DK3.  Lots of good stuff. The prices that Chubby Cherub and Metal Storm are going for on Amazon surprised me. Chubby is a pretty mediocre side scroller, and while Metal Storm is a pretty nifty game for introducing a new play mechanic (the gravity switcheroo) and had some pretty impressive graphics, I never remember hearing much hype surrounding it. It's also pretty hard. IIRC I've never made it past the 5th stage.  Everything that was still in the original box, including   The Motherload. This is just about everything that was still in its original box. Run Saber is another one that I didn't expect to be going for the prices it is, though I think I can understand why. It's easy to pick up and is a pretty awesome game with loads of fun bosses. It's short and kind of easy but a blast to play. Now I need to buy a SNES for my house. In other news I just cannot get the cigarette stink out of the roadside TV I picked up, even after wiping it down with grill cleaner, so that's going out next trash day. On the plus side even the highest end CRTs are going for dirt cheap these days so my wife gave me the go ahead to just buy one. 
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Apr 3, 2013 01:51
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Lencho posted:I shouldn't have bought this (I don't own a Master System) but... I'm jealous. Where'd you get all of this? As far as the market for the SMS goes, yep, pretty much what JJJJJS said. It's at this sort of odd sweet spot because they only sold about 2 million consoles, so there aren't a whole lot of people getting nostalgic for one, but games are fairly cheap and easy to find. It's a great system if you put the original controller aside and plug in a Genesis one. Looking back, I wonder if the lacking artwork on Master System games and cases has contributed to nobody remembering it. Nintendo's boxes and labels were often colorful and eye-catching. Sega went with this blah "pictures on top of graph paper" design and had no game label artwork, so even though the games are generally good there's nothing to display.
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Apr 3, 2013 12:55
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At the moment I only follow AVGN. I disagree with him on Terminator 2 for the NES though. T2 is about the only game LJN ever did well. Hours upon hours of knee shootin' goodness
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Apr 4, 2013 12:49
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I grew up kinda broke and tend to feel guilty buying anything that isn't a need. It keeps my spending in check but also leads to situations where I ask my wife something like "Hey, you mind if I buy this game for $3" and she just gives me this puzzled look. We're both working and her job pays really well, though I really don't want to get used to just picking things up whenever I see them.
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Apr 4, 2013 15:00
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MediumWellDone posted:
Nice! I have the American version and it's a lot of fun. I stopped playing after accidentally putting an elemental enchantment on my sword, which made it utterly worthless against a bunch of different types of monsters. Kinda curious to start it up again from scratch now.
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Apr 5, 2013 13:48
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Well poo. I almost joined the Trinitron club today but somebody grabbed the 32-inch set I'd seen at Savers for $30. Consoling myself with the fact that I'd have to have changed the setup in the basement pretty significantly for it. I'm combing over Craigslist for a 27" set that will (most likely) fit our current entertainment center better. It's utterly astounding how good of a set you can get even with a budget of $100. I decided I absolutely need surround sound and picture in picture and there's still multiple listings in our area that fit, even if they'll be more expensive than the set I just lost out on.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:58
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I saw an ad on Craigslist for a complete Genesis 1 with 10 games for $25. The seller dropped it down to $20 and I couldn't resist. Went out, didn't get murdered, took a look at the stuff and noticed that the AC adapter was strangely light. This is what was inside.  A smarter person would've just thrown it out, but I had to test it. And it works. Mostly. There's a deep, monotonous droning noise when the system is turned on. I quickly switched over to the adapter I already had. Kinda sucks since part of the reason I bought this was to get a second set of cords so I wouldn't have to keep switching back and forth between the Genesis and Master System. The games were cart only and nothing special, but the price was right so Sonic 2 (not for resale edition) Hardball Mrs. Pac Man Monopoly Aladdin Primal Rage (starts up, but goes black past the start menu) Hard Driving NFL '95 California Games Oh my god Hard Driving is un-loving-believably bad.
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Apr 6, 2013 20:35
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Can I make a suggestion/request? A lot of what goes on here is hardware chat, and while it's relevant, it's not always very interesting. More importantly it's not directly about games. I know that it's not like we can talk about the latest releases since, well, there are none. But even if you only count the 8/16 bit era and back there's a catalog of literally thousands of video games. Many of these we all know because we've played them a billion times; things like Super Mario Brothers 3 and Tetris and Mortal Kombat, for example, we probably wouldn't have much to say about. But how about that one game you love that nobody ever seems to mention, the one that's not necessarily rare or obscure but perhaps overlooked? I was right in the middle of a writeup on Rastan when my Master System got a bit finicky (something wrong with 1st player control port, kinda fixed) but I should finish that soon. Lately I've also been playing Shatterhand on the NES. I bought that right around the time I stopped collecting for the system and as such never played it much. I'm having a blast with it, more so since I learned you can punch bullets. Basically we've all played hundreds of games here but I'm sure we haven't played all of the same ones. I'd enjoy hearing about other people's favorites that slipped under the radar.
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Apr 7, 2013 17:40
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Unmature posted:Despite the love for the 8-bit Disney games, a lot of the 16-bit ones are forgotten. This is probably because they aren't re-released in our faces again and again and again like most classic games of the era. Aladdin gets mentioned a lot thanks to its difficulty, but people don't talk about a lot of the great ones. Which version of Aladdin? My sister got the SNES version for Christmas one year and I think I ended up playing it more than she did. Seemed pretty easy to me but a really enjoyable platformer overall. I just got the Genesis version a couple of days ago but haven't checked it out beyond plugging it in to make sure it worked. midwest ink posted:Kabuki Quantum Fighter gently caress YES.  It's Ninja Gaiden and The Matrix in a blender with a sprig of Contra. Kabuki Quantum Fighter is oddly overlooked, and the only thing I can think of is that maybe the premise of being a hair-whipping kabuki man fighting monsters in a computer was too weird. Control is tight, the graphics are great for the 8-bit era and the soundtrack rocks. And the challenge is just in that sweet spot where it's hard but not so frustrating that you want to throw a controller against the wall. I played this last night, and it's partly why I'm asking about overlooked games. Bit of a tease since this only came out in arcades, but Lucky & Wild was always a really fun play. It's a driving game with two handguns mounted on the side. You can play it with only one player (driving + 1 gun), but a lot of the fun came from having someone else in the adjacent seat. My cousin and I used to play this one with one of us driving and the other handling the guns. Probably the best part was seeing your character's reactions in the rear view mirror.  Edit: Yeesh, almost a page back. That'll teach me to stop and eat halfway through typing up a post. Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 8, 2013 |
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Apr 8, 2013 01:54
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Tobaccrow posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Rd-pe2dec The plot and cut scenes are also seriously b-movie style cheesy. Might have to give this one another play through soon.
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Apr 8, 2013 02:18
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Dr. Ohnoman posted:The music is, of course, amazing as always. DAYTOOOONAAAAAAAAAAAA I am bloody awful at racing games and even I like Daytona. Sorry to hear it's not working.
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Apr 8, 2013 13:17
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